Holophrastic indeterminacy

Last updated

Holophrastic indeterminacy, or indeterminacy of sentence translation, is one of two kinds of indeterminacy of translation to appear in the writings of philosopher W. V. O. Quine. [1] According to Quine, "there is more than one correct method of translating sentences where the two translations differ not merely in the meanings attributed to the sub-sentential parts of speech but also in the net import of the whole sentence". [2] [3] [4] It is holophrastic indeterminacy that underlies Quine's argument against synonymy, the basis of his objections to Rudolf Carnap's analytic/synthetic distinction. [5] Another kind of indeterminacy introduced by Quine is the "inscrutability of reference", which refers to parts of a sentence or individual words.

Contents

Indeterminacy of translation

Quine's work on indeterminacy of translation, stemming from the basic forms of indeterminacy, [2] is widely discussed in modern analytic philosophy:

W. V. O. Quine's contention that translation is indeterminate has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy. It is a standard-bearer for one of the late twentieth century's most characteristic philosophical preoccupations: the skepticism about semantic notions which is also developed in Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein on rules... and which many have read into Putnam's 'model-theoretic' assault on realism...[Cross references to chapters 15 and 17 omitted] [6]

— Crispin Wright, The indeterminacy of translation

Quine's approach to translation, radical translation, takes the perspective of trying to establish the meaning of sentences in a foreign language by observing and questioning native speakers of that language. [7] [8] It is a hypothetical version of what could be an empirical investigation. By an armchair analysis of such an adventure, Quine argues that it is impossible to construct a unique translation that can be defended as better than all others. The reason is predicated upon an argued unavoidable introduction of the two indeterminacies above. According to Hilary Putnam, it is “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories”. [9]

Naturalized epistemology

Holophrastic indeterminacy is important to the understanding of Quine's naturalized epistemology. As Quine states his thesis:

"If the English sentences of a theory have their meaning only together as a body, then we can justify their translation into Arunta only together as a body...Any translations of the English sentences into Arunta sentences will be as correct as any other, so long as the net empirical implications of the theory as a whole are preserved in translation. But it is to be expected that many different ways of translating the component sentences, essentially different individually, would deliver the same empirical implications for the theory as a whole; deviations in the translation of one component sentence could be compensated for in the translation of another component sentence. Insofar, there can be no ground for saying which of two glaringly unlike translations of individual sentences is right." [10]

— Willard V. O. Quine, Epistemology naturalized, p. 80

Quine's naturalized epistemology in brief is the view that instead of traditional attempts to connect how our beliefs relate to evidence, epistemology should focus upon how experience leads to beliefs: the causal connections between our sensory evidence and our beliefs about the world. . [11] [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:

Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle. This theory of knowledge asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willard Van Orman Quine</span> American philosopher and logician (1908–2000)

Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He served as the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978.

In formal semantics, an ontological commitment of a language is one or more objects postulated to exist by that language. The 'existence' referred to need not be 'real', but exist only in a universe of discourse. As an example, legal systems use vocabulary referring to 'legal persons' that are collective entities that have rights. One says the legal doctrine has an ontological commitment to non-singular individuals.

Analytic philosophy is a broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy and especially anglophone philosophy, focused on analysis. Analytic philosophy is characterized by a style of clarity of prose and rigor in arguments, making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences. It is further characterized by an interest in language and meaning known as the linguistic turn. It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, modern predicate logic and mathematical logic.

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analytic–synthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience.

Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic views about the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts the focus of epistemology away from many traditional philosophical questions, and towards the empirical processes of knowledge acquisition. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that we should abandon traditional epistemology and replace it with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from cognitive sciences. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.

Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.

Computational epistemology is a subdiscipline of formal epistemology that studies the intrinsic complexity of inductive problems for ideal and computationally bounded agents. In short, computational epistemology is to induction what recursion theory is to deduction. It has been applied to problems in philosophy of science.

The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th-century American analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set theory. The indeterminacy of translation is also discussed at length in his Ontological Relativity. Crispin Wright suggests that this "has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy". This view is endorsed by Hilary Putnam, who states that it is "the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories".

Metaepistemology is the branch of epistemology and metaphilosophy that studies the underlying assumptions made in debates in epistemology, including those concerning the existence and authority of epistemic facts and reasons, the nature and aim of epistemology, and the methodology of epistemology.

The analytic–synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction used primarily in philosophy to distinguish between propositions that are of two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are true or not true solely by virtue of their meaning, whereas synthetic propositions' truth, if any, derives from how their meaning relates to the world.

Radical translation is a thought experiment in Word and Object, a major philosophical work from American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. It is used as an introduction to his theory of the indeterminacy of translation, and specifically to prove the point of inscrutability of reference. Using this concept of radical translation, Quine paints a setting where a linguist discovers a native linguistic community whose linguistic system is completely unrelated to any language familiar to the linguist. Quine then describes the steps taken by the linguist while attempting to fully translate this unfamiliar language based on the only data available: the events happening around the linguist combined with the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of natives.

Metaontology or meta-ontology is the study of the field of inquiry known as ontology. The goal of meta-ontology is to clarify what ontology is about and how to interpret the meaning of ontological claims. Different meta-ontological theories disagree on what the goal of ontology is and whether a given issue or theory lies within the scope of ontology. There is no universal agreement whether meta-ontology is a separate field of inquiry besides ontology or whether it is just one branch of ontology.

<i>Word and Object</i> 1960 book by Willard Van Orman Quine

Word and Object is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in From a Logical Point of View (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" on the analytic–synthetic distinction. The thought experiment of radical translation and the accompanying notion of indeterminacy of translation are original to Word and Object, which is Quine's most famous book.

The inscrutability or indeterminacy of reference is a thesis by 20th century analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in his book Word and Object. The main claim of this theory is that any given sentence can be changed into a variety of other sentences where the parts of the sentence will change in what they reference, but they will nonetheless maintain the meaning of the sentence as a whole. The referential relation is inscrutable, because it is subject to the background language and ontological commitments of the speaker.

Formative epistemology is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. According to formative epistemology, knowledge is gained through the imputation of thoughts from one human being to another in the societal setting. Humans are born without intrinsic knowledge and through their evolutionary and developmental processes gain knowledge from other human beings. Thus, according to formative epistemology, all knowledge is completely subjective and truth does not exist.

The internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quine–Putnam indispensability argument</span> Argument in the philosophy of mathematics

The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.

<i>Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quines Naturalism</i> 2018 philosophy book by Sander Verhaegh

Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine's Naturalism is a 2018 book by Dutch philosopher and historian of analytic philosophy Sander Verhaegh. Released at a time in which there was increasing work done on Willard Van Orman Quine in the history of analytic philosophy, the book was the first to provide a full account of the historical development of his naturalism. It was also the first book to use the extensive archive materials on Quine at Harvard University's Houghton Library.

References

  1. ↑ Willard V. O. Quine (2013). Word and Object (PDF) (New ed.). MIT Press. ISBN   9780262518314.
  2. 1 2 Willard Quine (2008). "Chapter 31: Three indeterminacies". Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist: And Other Essays. Harvard University Press. pp. 368–386. ISBN   978-0674030848. A lecture "Three Indeterminacies," presented at the Quine symposium at Washington University in April 1988. The three indeterminacies are (i) the underdetermination of scientific theory, (ii) indetermninacy of translation and (iii) inscrutability of reference. The first of these refers to Quine's assessment that evidence alone does not dictate the choice of a scientific theory. The second refers to holophrastic indeterminacy. The third refers to indeterminacy in interpreting individual words or sub-sentences.
  3. ↑ Willard V. O. Quine (1990). "§20 Indeterminacy of reference". Pursuit of truth (2nd ed.). Harvard University Press. p.  50. ISBN   0674739507. The serious and controversial thesis of indeterminacy of translation is not that [indeterminacy of reference]; it is rather the holographic thesis, which is stronger. It declares for divergences that remain unreconciled even at the level of the whole sentence, and are compensated for only by divergences in the translations of other whole sentences
  4. ↑ Hylton, Peter (Apr 30, 2010). "Willard van Orman Quine". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition).
  5. ↑ Peter Hylton (2007). "Radical translation and its indeterminacy". Quine. Routledge. p. 199. ISBN   978-0203962435.
  6. ↑ Crispin Wright (1999). "Chapter 16: The indeterminacy of translation". In Bob Hale; Crispin Wright (eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 397. ISBN   0631213260.
  7. ↑ Edward N. Zalta, ed. (Jun 29, 2009). "Donald Davidson: Radical interpretation". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition). Quine envisages a case in which translation of a language must proceed without any prior linguistic knowledge and solely on the basis of the observed behaviour of the speakers of the language in conjunction with observation of the basic perceptual stimulations that give rise to that behaviour.
  8. ↑ Nicholas Bunnin; Jiyaun Yu, eds. (2004). "Radical translation". The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. doi:10.1111/b.9781405106795.2004.x. ISBN   9781405106795.
  9. ↑ Putnam. H. (March 1974). "The refutation of conventionalism". Noûs. 8 (1): 25–40. doi:10.2307/2214643. JSTOR   2214643. Reprinted in Putnam, H. (1979). "Chapter 9: The refutation of conventionalism". Philosophical Papers; Volume 2: Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–191. ISBN   0521295513. Quote on p. 159.
  10. ↑ Willard V. O. Quine (1969). Ontological relativity and other essays. Columbia University Press. p. 80. ISBN   0231083572.
  11. ↑ Feldman, Richard (Jul 5, 2001). "Naturalized Epistemology". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition). The most extreme view along these lines recommends replacing traditional epistemology with the psychological study of how we reason. A more modest view recommends that philosophers make use of results from sciences studying cognition to resolve epistemological issues.
  12. ↑ Benjamin Bayer (July 6, 2009). "Quine's pragmatic solution to skeptical doubts" (PDF). International Journal of Philosophical Studies. 18 (2): 177–204. doi:10.1080/09672551003677853. S2CID   170806923. While it is true that both traditional epistemology and Quine's project study the theory – evidence relationship, critics may wonder whether this common subject matter is enough to count Quine's naturalism as genuine epistemology.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.